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Her Story: Women's Autobiographies in Hindi

The privilege of writing the self has been denied to non-Westerns as representatives of cultures that do not give importance to individualism. It has been denied to women as well because their lives are allegedly not important.

This approach has changed with the new perspectives offered by post-colonial and feminist/gender theories on individual narrative. The lecture will discuss briefly theories of autobiography, history, and the significance of women's life writings in Hindi in post-colonial India, and present a close reading of Kausalya Baisantri's _The Double Curse_, the autobiography of a Dalit woman in Hindi.

Dr. Monika Browarczyk is associate professor of Hindi Language and Literature in the South Asian Studies Center at the Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, Poland. She completed her PhD in modern Hindi Literature at Warsaw University, Poland.

She worked for three years at Delhi University, India. She is visiting the University of Texas in Austin on a Fulbright Fellowship, and working on her current project on Hindi women writers' autobiographies.